I didn’t finish work early enough yesterday to check on this but managed to go back in my lunch break today. The mushroom was still there and had matured quite a bit. With no annulus and pink gills it was obviously a Volvopluteus. It also had plenty of humus attached to the base, as expected with a saprobe. I will update with photos later.

Thanks for all the discusion. Debbie, there have been sightings of A. phalloides in Ballarat and I hope to see one while I’m here. I can understand how poisonings occur with people picking these. They look very similar when immature.

my ignorance of OZ trees is vast, and those are certainly no true pines!

Phalloides has many, many tree hosts, though, from conifers to hardwoods and including eucalyptus, and seems to be continually expanding its tree hosts.
could one of those have been nearby?

Both phalloides and gloiocephalus can have pointed or rounded caps (that darned variability thing), and phalloides caps can get silvery gray when drying out…, and both also have those embedded longitudinal fibrils.

Spore print and annulus check would tell us fer sure, one way or t’other.

I’m guessing Rod is alluding to the possibility that this might be Volvopluteus, which it looks like to me based on the rather conical cap, grayish-virgate cap surface, and lack of mycorrhizal hosts nearby.

It looks like you had an interesting time at the Botanical Garden. I suppose one doesn’t collect there? If you happen to have seen this specimen in an expanded state, I’m wondering if there were white or pink spores.